Marco Rubio: China Delivered A ‘Message Embedded In’ Sending Spy Balloon To U.S.

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION. I’m Jake Tapper.

Many Republicans reacted with outrage after President Biden waited for the suspected Chinese spy balloon to leave the continental United States before shooting it down, for safety reasons, they said, at the Pentagon’s guidance.

Joining us now is the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

Senator, thanks so much for joining us.

So you have said the President Biden should have shot the balloon down earlier. The defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said — quote — “After careful analysis, U.S. military commanders had determined to downing the balloon while over land posed an undue risk to people across a wide area due to the size and altitude of the balloon and its surveillance payload.”

And, as you heard Secretary Buttigieg just a few minutes ago said that the debris field after the balloon was shot down was about seven miles’ long.

Should President Biden have ordered that it be shot down anyway, regardless of that risk?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): No, not regardless of the risk.

First of all, they can track these things. I would hope you can track a slow moving balloon that clearly is headed here, as you can see from its trajectory. I think that’s one of the things we will learn this week, is how soon, how late into January did they already know that there’s this high-altitude balloon and what its trajectory was and where it was headed, and why didn’t they take action at that time?

That’s number one. I think the other thing that we need to know about it and understand is, why did it take so long for them to disclose this to the American public? I don’t think the trajectory of where this balloon was going was a mystery. I think, pretty early on, they probably — because of the prevailing winds, because of the direction that it was headed, I think it was pretty clear that this thing was going to enter the Northwest in Montana, in Idaho, move its way down the Midwest and exit the Eastern Seaboard just off the Carolinas.

I mean, that’s an unprecedented flight path. And why did it wait until Wednesday to notify — or Thursday to talk about it the American people, knowing people were going to be seeing this thing?

TAPPER: As the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, do you know, has the U.S. recovered any parts of the Chinese spy balloon? Has the — and did the monitoring of the balloon during its journey, as far as you know, yield any worthwhile information for the U.S.?

RUBIO: Well, we won’t know that until we get to a secure setting this week in Washington. And, probably, most of that is something we won’t be able to disclose in any great detail, other than to say this.

And that is that they’re going to try to recover this. Apparently, it’s in shallow waters. We will see what they recover from it. But I don’t think the technology or the existence of these things is a great mystery. I think what’s embedded here is a clear message. It’s not a coincidence that this happens leading up to the State of the Union address, leading up to Blinken’s visit to China.

The Chinese knew that this was going to be spotted. They knew that we were going to have to react to it. They flew it over military installations and sensitive sites across — right across the middle. I mean, look at the flight path of this thing. It’s a diagonal shot right through the middle of the continental United States.

And the message embedded in this to the world is, we can fly a balloon over airspace of the United States of America, and you won’t be able to do anything about it to stop us. They calculated this carefully with a message embedded in it. And I think that’s the part we can’t forget here. It’s not just the balloon.It’s the message to try to send the world that America — we can do whatever we want, and America can’t stop us.

TAPPER: What information do you think the spy balloon might have gleaned as it traveled?

I know, it’s over — the fear is that it was over some U.S. military installations. I’m also wondering if infrastructure was probably part of the surveillance task at hand.

RUBIO: Well, again, it would be speculation, other than to tell you that those things usually at that altitude, and what they’re doing is probably trying to collect on signals, on electronic information that’s transiting that they can pick up on.

There are various other means that they can do that as well. And that’s why I go back to the whole point of the message. There are probably other ways that China could acquire whatever they acquired using this balloon. I may be wrong. There may be some unique attributes to it that I’m — that I’m not aware of yet, but we will learn more about this week.

But I think, more than anything else, beyond just the ability to collect information, it is the ability to send a clear message, and that is that we have the ability to do this, and America can’t do anything about it. If they’re not going to be able to stop a balloon from flying over U.S. airspace, how is America going to come to your aid if we invade Taiwan or take land from India or take islands from the Philippines and Japan? And I think the fact that they would do that leading up to State of

the Union, leading up to what was then Blinken’s scheduled visit, none of that is a coincidence. So, we need to understand clearly there was messaging behind this.

TAPPER: But you — so you think that — first of all, I guess there are two parts to a question I have following up on that.

One is, the Pentagon says that they know of the Chinese doing this at least four other times, previously once at the beginning of the Biden administration, three times during the Trump administration. It seems to be you’re saying — oh, you’re saying, no, that’s not true?

But, in any case, is the — what’s the difference?

RUBIO: No. No, what I’m saying — OK.

Well, the difference is this. Are we aware, have we seen the Chinese fly these balloons in the past? Yes. I think there’s even been Twitter pictures of it flying at one point off the coast of the U.S. down south somewhere. The existence of the balloons is not a mystery to people in that field.

What we have never seen, what is unprecedented, and whoever the source was at the Department of Defense would have to acknowledge this, what is unprecedented is a balloon flight that entered over Idaho and flew over Montana, over all these sensitive military installations, air force bases, ICBM fields, right across the middle of the country.

That has never happened before. That is unprecedented. That it flew briefly over some part of the U.S. or continental U.S., that’s one thing. But what we saw this week, it’s unprecedented. And that’s why everyone’s reacting the way they’re reacting. We have never seen this.

So, this is no comparison to anything that may have happened up to this point.

TAPPER: Your colleague and friend Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina accused President Biden of — quote — “dereliction of duty” by allowing the Chinese spy balloon to fly across the U.S.

That’s a pretty strong accusation. Do you agree with it?

RUBIO: Well, I think the dereliction of duty begins with this.

Why not, on Tuesday or Wednesday — you know people are going to see this. At some point, you’re going to have to disclose it. And they probably didn’t want to, because they didn’t want to have their hand forced on canceling this Blinken visit. And so they didn’t —…